508 BIOaRAPHICAL NOTICE OF THE LATE REV. DR CHALMERS. 



deserved, and fully deserved. There is great power of argument, felicitous illus- 

 tration, and a glowing enthusiasm of admiration, for the theological literature, 

 and the erudition, and the learning, and the eminent men produced by the eccle- 

 siastical and academical endowments of England. In reference to the Church of 

 England he writes: — " There are many who look with an evil eye to the endow- 

 ments of the English Church, and to the indolence of her dignitaries. But to 

 that Church the theological literature of our nation stands indebted for her best 

 acquisitions ; and we hold it a refreshing spectacle, at any time that meagre 

 Socinianism pours forth a new supply of flippancies and errors, when we behold, 

 as we have often done, an armed champion come forth in full equipment, from 

 some high and lettered retreat of that noble hierarchy ; nor can we grudge her 

 the wealth of her endowments, when we think how well, under her venerable 

 auspices, the battles of orthodoxy have been fought, — that in this holy warfare 

 they are hev sons and her scholars who are ever foremost in the field — ready at 

 all times to face the threatening mischief, and by the weight of their erudition to 

 overturn it." 



In the same work, " On the Use and Abiise of Literary and Ecclesiastical 

 Endowments," he thus wi'ites of Oxford and Cambridge : 



" We cannot conclude this passing notice of the Universities of England, with- 

 out the mention of how much they ai-e ennobled by those great master-spirits, 

 those men of might and of high achievement, — the Newtons, and the Miltons, and 

 the Drydens, and the Barrows, and the Addisons, and the Butlers, and the Clarkes, 

 and the Stilhng'fleets, and the Ushers, and the Foxes, and the Pitts, and Johnsons, 

 who, within their attic retreats, received that first awakening, which afterwards 

 expanded into the aspirations and the triumphs of loftiest genius. This is the 

 true heraldry of colleges. Their family honom* is built on the prowess of sons, 

 not on the greatness of ancestors ; and we will venture to say, that there are no 

 seminaries in Em-ope on which there sits a greater weight of accumulated glory, 

 than that which has been reflected, both on Oxford and Cambridge, by that long 

 and bright train of descendants who have sprung from them. It is impossible to 

 make even the bare perusal of their names without the feeling, that there has 

 been summoned before the eye of the mind the panorama of all that has upheld 

 the lustre, whether of England's philosophy, or of England's patriotism, for cen- 

 turies together. We have often thought what a meagre and stinted literature we 

 should have had without them ; and what, but for the two Universities, would 

 have been the present state of science or theology in England ! These rich semi- 

 naries have been the direct and the powerful organs for the elaboration of both ; 

 and both would rapidly decline, as if languishing under the want of their needful 

 aliment, were the endowments of colleges swept away. It were a truly Gothic 

 spoliation ; and the ride of that political economy which could seize upon their 

 revenues, would be, in effect, as hostile to the cause of sound and elevated learn- 



